We have an unfortunate way of domesticating the Great Commission.
We nod along at “go and make disciples,” then quietly file it under the work of professionals—the missionary, the pastor, the unusually bold few—while the rest of us go about our worldly affairs. I have caught myself doing exactly this: applauding the goer while keeping a comfortable distance from the going.
In Luke 10, the Lord Jesus appointed 70 of his followers and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Luke 10:1–2 ESV). Why 70? This corresponds with Genesis 10—the Table of Nations—and its numbering of the peoples of the earth after the flood. To refer to “70,” in other words, was a shorthand allusion to the whole Gentile world. Earlier Jesus had sent the Twelve, a number that spoke of Israel regathered. Now he sends a number that encompasses every nation under heaven. God has desired the nations for his glory since the earliest moment of redemptive history, and these men were the firstfruits of a harvest he means to bring in from the ends of the earth.
The placement is deliberate; moments earlier, Jesus had turned away three would-be followers, telling the last that no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God (9:62). Then, without pausing for breath, he commissions 70 of his disciples and pushes them out the door.
We have to handle this passage responsibly and faithfully as we attempt to apply it to our own lives. Some texts are prescriptive, applicable to us directly, while others are simply descriptive, reporting what happened. The 70 were sent on a specific, short-lived errand at a unique hinge of redemptive history, scouting the towns Jesus himself was about to enter, only weeks before the cross. We are not bound to reenact their itinerary down to the empty wallet and the bare feet, and we are not all commissioned the way they were. Most of us will read this account as senders rather than as those sent.
But the fact that a passage does not land on modern readers as a direct command does not mean it leaves us alone. Luke 10 reveals that King Jesus is a missionary King. Thus, following this King is not a private arrangement between you and your conscience. His mission has a claim on your life. For some, that claim means going. For most, it means something less direct and no less demanding—praying, sending, giving, and speaking up where God has already set you down. Either way, to embrace Christ is to embrace his work.
So what does Christ call his people to do?
1. Pray Before Anything Else
Notice what he commands first: not a strategy or a recruiting drive, but prayer. “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (v. 2). The verb translated “send out” is ekballō—the same muscular word used elsewhere for casting out demons. Jesus is not asking us to gently suggest that a few volunteers think about missions but is telling his people to beg the Father to thrust workers into the field.
The global harvest fields are ripe for the picking; there is a shortage of qualified gospel laborers to bring in that harvest, and the remedy Jesus prescribes is to seek God in prayer for the sake of commissioning workers. Here, at least, the command falls on all of us alike. Every Christian can pray this prayer, and every Christian is told to. Many individuals I know have chosen to set a daily reminder to pray to the Lord of the harvest.
2. Expect Wolves
Then he tells them what they are walking into. “Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves” (v. 3). He does not even describe them as sheep but as lambs, the most defenseless animals in the fold. And he does not bury this fact in fine print or hold it for the orientation packet but leads with it. Following Jesus into the harvest, to borrow from C.S. Lewis’ description of Aslan, is not safe, though it is good.
The danger is not reserved for the front lines. For the goer in a closed country, it may cost a home, a family, or a life; for the rest of us, in our offices and neighborhoods, it costs less—a reputation, a promotion, or a relationship that sours the moment the gospel is broached. But for those on both sides of the sending equation, wolves are present. And despite all this, the lambs go on their way because the Shepherd who sends them is worthy.
And despite all this, the lambs go on their way because the Shepherd who sends them is worthy.
3. Supply Those You Send
The instructions that follow have puzzled careful readers for centuries. Jesus tells the 70 to carry no moneybag, knapsack, or extra sandals and to greet no one on the road (v. 4). Contrary to a surface gloss of the text, he is not binding his disciples to a vow of poverty or banning ordinary courtesies. Rather, he is outlining the right approach for an urgent, short-term errand. Though our circumstances differ, we should be no less urgent with a message such as ours that affects souls eternally.
Another timeless principle leaps off the page: “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages” (v. 7). The Lord of the harvest does not expect his workers to bankroll their own sending. He expects the people they reach, and the people who send them, to keep them fed.
The apostle Paul built a whole argument on this very text, laying it beside the Old Testament command not to muzzle the ox as it treads the grain, and concluding that those who preach the gospel should get their living by the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:9, 14; cf. Deuteronomy 25:4). The laborer is worthy of his wages.
We may not personally be sent like the 70, but many of us are in a position to hold the rope for those who go. How many qualified, called, commissioned missionaries are unable to deploy into the harvest simply because the people of God have not backed them with sufficient generosity? These are reasons to consider supporting a missionary who is raising his or her initial funds.
4. Announce; Don’t Just Show
When the 70 arrive at their destination, they are given two things to do: “Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (v. 9). Heal and say. The healings were intended as signs and credentials for the message at a foundational moment; the proclamation of the message of the kingdom was the enduring focus.
You have likely heard the line pinned on Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.” There is a kernel of truth in this statement—our lives should commend our message, and a watching world ought to see Christians who love their neighbors and tell the truth at work. But Jesus did not send the 70 to live quietly and hope someone asked. He sent them to announce something: the kingdom of God has come near.
The good news of the gospel is news before it is anything else, and news has to be spoken. A holy life can earn you a hearing, but it cannot preach a sermon. Sooner or later, wherever God has placed you, somebody must open his mouth and say the words of life.
The good news of the gospel is news before it is anything else, and news has to be spoken.
5. Know When to Stay—and When to Go
Not every town would receive the 70 witnesses, and Jesus said so plainly. Where they were refused, they were to walk into the streets, wipe off even the dust of that place, and announce one last time that the kingdom had come near (vv. 10–11). A devout Jew shook pagan soil from his feet rather than track it into the holy land; Jesus tells his messengers to do the very same even in a Jewish town that spurns its Messiah. Bloodline no longer marks the people of God; response to Christ does.
The stakes are not small. He warns that Sodom will find the day of judgment more bearable than a town that hears and shrugs (v. 12). The word of God never returns void (Isaiah 55:11), but sometimes the harvest it brings is one of judgment.
This presents arguably the hardest question in the passage: when does a gospel worker stay, and when do you shake off the dust and move on from unbelief? Jesus hands us no formula, but the text presses two questions we can ask ourselves when faced with rejection:
- First, have I spoken the truth—all of it—plainly? Shaking off the dust is not a license to quit at the first cold reception. The 70 were told to preach even to the town that turned them out. Paul was able to leave the Ephesian elders at Miletus with a clean conscience only because he had proclaimed the whole counsel of the Word (Acts 20:27), in public and private, during scheduled and unscheduled times. Say the whole truth before you conclude it has been refused. A hard conversation is not a closed door.
- Second, is staying here keeping me from people who have never heard it once? There is a difference between faithful patience and pouring a decade into ground that will not break while whole peoples wait without a single witness. Some quit too soon and call it discernment; others stay forever and call it faithfulness. Do not be held emotionally hostage to hostile unbelief such that you pass by those who are ripe for spiritual harvest.
6. Rejoice in Grace, Not Gifts
When the mission trip was concluded, the 70 came back glowing: “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” (v. 17). The task had succeeded; hell had given up ground before their very eyes. Yet Jesus curbs their enthusiasm: “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (v. 20).
We are not to find our satisfaction merely in what God accomplishes through us on mission but in what God has done for us that we could never do ourselves. Jesus himself wonderfully illustrates this point in the verses that follow, where we are told—for the only time in all four Gospels—that Jesus himself rejoiced in the Spirit (v. 21). And what did he rejoice in? Not the conquest of demons, the healing of the sick, or even the faithfulness of preachers, but in the Father’s free grace overflowing in his revelation of his Son to his elect children.
It is possible to love the work more than the Lord who gives it—to count baptisms and budgets and support totals and slowly come to treasure the going, or the giving, itself. The work is good, but it was never meant to be the grounds for your joy. The God who wrote your name in the book of life long before you prayed your first prayer for the harvest, is.
So let us pray for laborers, and let some of us be willing to become the answer. Let us supply the ones we send. Let us open our mouths where Christ has placed us. And in all of it, may we rejoice less in the mission than in the Master—whose grace has written our names in heaven, and who sends his servants out to tell others where their names may be written too.
